- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 09:50:15 +0100 (BST)
- To: www-style@w3.org
> people's inclination for self-destructive behavior. One thing that you > learn pretty quickly in usability classes is that users will ask for > things they don't really want and things that will ultimately harm You meant "need" not "want". > them. I don't write copy, I don't design graphics. Why? Because I One thing want learns in (elementary) marketing classes is that sales are based on satisfying wants, not needs. People with marketing budgets don't want informed customers, they want "cool" web sites with lots of flashy gimmicks, and to establish an instantly visible brand image that is completely different from their competitors. I'm actually in rather in the useit.com camp, as far as web site consumers (users in the normal terminology) are concerned, but that makes me more of an HTML person than a CSS person. A lot of people posting to this list (probably more casual posters than stalwarts) complain than useit.com is too bland (sometimes confusing his site, which is a one man site with what he is preaching) and that Nielsen is telling them not to do their job. There is at least one WAI (Accessibility) contributor who also takes this view, but I suspect that is because he know where his money comes from. Traditionally Adobe products have addressed the advertising market, and web pages are largely advertising (even bought in intranet applications have a self advertising element) and SVG also does that. Netscape tried, and largely succeeded, in hijacking HTML into that market. Like most 20th and 21st century advertising, most web advertising isn't about informing the customer but about establishing a proxy market in which the customer pays for the real product but buys based on the commercial art, viewed as art. Also, styling can convey messages that could be challenged if made explicitly in print. What CSS is attempting to do is to provide people with some real content to present with the ability to meet the marketing requirement that the site sell as art, or establish a strong brand image, by means other than using HTML purely to control visual rendering. It only really exists because the people who commission web sites want them to be works of visual art, with fonts, colours, etc. Unfortunately, whilst markets work better than planned economies, they don't necessarily produce what is good for the consumers, only what those with buying power want. (Personally, I find commercial sites largely vary between the completely unusable and the just about navigable but useless because there is inadequate information about the product to make an informed buying decision.) Note that I've largely talked about commercial internet web sites here, as, in talking about your five areas, that what you seem to have been talking about. Web applications, are a little different, in that whilst they still strive to brand and entertain (there are relatively few really new applications, so products have to sell on entertainment value) they also often strive to behave like thick client applications, running on the native OS.
Received on Saturday, 2 July 2005 21:46:25 UTC